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MESQUITE, TX - A cell phone video of a Texas police officer pepper spraying a baby squirrel in front of a group of students has sparked outrage after being posted on YouTube. In the video, the middle school students can be heard pleading with the officer to leave the animal alone. According to FOX , the Mesquite Police Department is defending ...

MIAMI - A Miami police officer and a federal agent fired on two armed men who pointed weapons at officers in Liberty City early Friday, killing one, authorities said. The Miami officer, Ricardo Martinez, had just returned to work following another fatal shooting -- that of a 16-year-old youth in Overtown during a robbery sting. The federal officer was not named. ...

‘America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh isn’t burned out, nor does he plan to fade away anytime soon. But he’ll likely need to find another home for his long-running true crime show, which aired on Fox for 23 years until its cancellation Monday. While four more episodes of “Wanted” will trickle out as two-hour specials, the weekly program — whose high ...

Rapper Common's invitation to the White House Wednesday evening, during National Police Week (May 9-15), drew the anger of many groups. NBC New York reports that the New Jersey state police union is especially upset over Common's "A Song for Assata" about Assata Shakur, a former Black Panther party member, who was convicted of killing Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. According ...

BANGOR, Maine — A city election official who refused to allow an armed, uniformed Bangor police officer to vote last week will not be working at the polls for the remainder of the 2010 elections. Bangor City Clerk Patti Dubois, who is in charge of staffing the city’s lone polling place, the Bangor Civic Center, confirmed Monday that Wayne Mallar, a ...

SEATTLE - Everybody's done it. You place an item on top of a car only to remember later — after you or someone else has driven off. But when the forgetful individual is a Seattle police officer and the item is a semi-automatic rifle, it's more than a little embarrassing. It's also the focus of an internal investigation. Seattle police spokesman ...

MARICOPA COUNTY - The self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff" in America, Phoenix's Joe Arpaio, who has survived six separate inmate lawsuits trying to stop him from playing Christmas music, will begin playing the tunes again this year - starting Monday with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,""Frosty the Snowman" and "Feliz Navidad." The 8,000 inmates also will hear, among others, "A Christmas Kwanzaa Solstice," "Over ...

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. - A Mount Rainier police officer was indicted Tuesday by a Prince George’s County grand jury on attempted murder and sex-offense charges after a July 2 shooting in Capitol Heights, the state’s attorney’s office said. The officer, who was off-duty at the time, maintained that he had been carjacked. A 12-count indictment alleges that Gene Gillette, 27, shot ...

GEORGETOWN, Del. (AP) — A Maryland man convicted of killing a Delaware police officer in 2009 was sentenced to death Friday by a judge who described him as a dangerous career criminal. Derrick Powell of Cumberland, Md., hung his head but said nothing after Judge. T. Henley Graves imposed the death penalty for the September 2009 murder of Georgetown patrolman Chad ...

DAYTONA, FL - An off-duty Oak Hill police officer with his wife and children in tow narrated a high-speed car chase that included his firing a shot at a pickup driver accused of attempting to ram the family's sedan. The recording of the 9-1-1 call to Volusia County sheriff's dispatchers released Monday included claims of a pursuit that reached speeds of ...

NEW YORK - A retired NYPD police officer and his wife scuffled with cops in a Manhattan stationhouse after their teenage son was stopped, frisked and handcuffed, cops said. Merault Almonor, 49, punched a female officer in the face during the March 20 fracas in the 30th Precinct stationhouse in Harlem, cops said. But Almonor's lawyer said the former cop, his ...

DETROIT - Locked in a segregated prison cell eight years ago, Raphael B. Johnson never thought that someday he'd help run the same police department that arrested him. Then again, maybe he did. Self-confidence is one thing Johnson never lacked. An unyielding belief in himself sustained him through 12 years of prison -- six in solitary confinement -- where he did ...

MANATEE, FL -- A Manatee County Sheriff’s Office sergeant was suspended without pay for almost 26 hours after he labeled a scripture passage in a Bible as “the Obama prayer” and left it on co-worker’s desk, according to a recently released internal affairs report. The highlighted scripture was Psalm 109, which reads in part, “Let his days be few, and let ...

FRESNO, Calif. — A Good Samaritan who spotted a suspected kidnapper and cut him off in traffic rescued an abducted Fresno girl Tuesday. "It was truly a miracle of God," said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer in announcing the arrest of a 24-year-old gang member on suspicion of kidnapping the 8-year-old girl from in front of her central Fresno home Monday ...

MIAMI — As thousands of law enforcement officers gathered inside the American Airlines Arena here Monday morning for a funeral for two slain Miami-Dade police officers, news quickly spread that two more officers had been shot and killed a few hours earlier — this time in St. Petersburg, Fla. It was an eerie repeat of the police shootings last Thursday in ...

TORONTO -- A Toronto police officer nicknamed "Officer Bubbles" on YouTube over an incident during the G20 summit has launched a $1.2-million defamation suit against the website. Const. Adam Josephs received the nickname after an online video surfaced of him telling a protester she would be arrested if any of her bubbles touched police officers. Josephs is not suing over the ...

Hello old PoliceLink friends! This morning I received a message from a friend of mine, who I've known for 10 or more years. My friend, Lou Jordan, is very active in supporting both law enforcement and fire / rescue officers. A few days ago Lou received a request from the family of an extremely ill little girl named Kelsey. From my ...

NEW YORK — A police officer is gunned down in his patrol car in Penn Hills, Pa., while waiting for backup. Near Seattle, four officers starting their day at a coffee shop are ambushed by an ex-con with a handgun. Another four officers are shot to death in Oakland, Calif., after a traffic stop gone awry. Across the nation, 2009 was ...

BROOKLYN - A gang of alleged drug dealers have been caught after they were photographed at work by the Google Street View car. The gang were selling heroin and marijuana outside a grocery store in Brooklyn, New York, when the Google driver went past and inadvertently took their picture. The street corner where they worked was then put under surveillance and ...

During a violent Memorial Day spree, an off-duty Franklin County deputy shot and killed his ex-wife in a Roanoke convenience store parking lot and then fled in his patrol car, police said. Then, after a nearly hour-long pursuit that ended in Montgomery County, the deputy was stopped by police gunfire -- after a state trooper was wounded and the resulting investigation ...